Embedded Files
Look - Click Here for -
More: Articles by Kate Jones >
More: Thistleboon collection >
Blue Plaque in Thistleboon
Blue Plaque in Thistleboon
If you are passing through Thistleboon you might notice a blue plaque on the boundary wall of a large house in Plunch Lane. It commemorates the short life of a young Welsh musician, Morfydd Owen, who died in the house – Craig-y-môr – on 7 September 1918, just a few weeks before the end of the First World War. The Gower Society plaque was unveiled on the centenary of her death.
Craig-y-Mor, the home of Morfydd Owen at Thistleboon, photo: 1899
When she died Morfydd was only twenty-six years old; a gifted soprano and pianist and a composer of some 250 scores. Her obituary in Y Gorlan (journal of the Welsh Presbyterian chapel) commented: ‘Oh, Death! We knew that thou wert blind, but in striking Morfydd thou hast taught us that thou art also deaf’.
Morfydd Owen was born in Treforest, Glamorgan on 1 October 1891 the youngest of four children. Her parents, William and Sarah Owen, were amateur musicians and their daughter’s musical abilities were obvious from an early age. She began playing the piano at the age of four and by six was composing her own music.
Throughout her childhood and adolescence she performed in chapels and at eisteddfodau and at eighteen won a scholarship to study at University College, Cardiff. Many of her compositions were performed whilst she was there and when she graduated in 1912 she moved to London to study further at the Royal College of Music. That summer she was admitted to the Gorsedd of Bards at the Wrexham Eisteddfod.
In her first year at the Royal College Morfydd won every available prize as well as first prize for singing at the Swansea Eisteddfod. The premiere of her music at London’s Queen’s Hall in 1913 was followed by other public performances. A great musical future was anticipated.
In London, Morfydd’s social life centred around two separate and very different groups – one religious and the other literary.
At the Welsh Presbyterian chapel in Charing Cross Road - a gathering point for many Welsh people living in London - she formed a close friendship with Lady Ruth Lewis, wife of the Liberal MP for Flintshire.
Her career was helped by many concert invitations and commissions. Morfydd’s other influential social circle was the London literary intelligentsia which included Ezra Pound, D.H. Lawrence and many Russian emigrés. Through friendships with the latter and her work with Lady Lewis for the Welsh Folk-Song Society of London Morfydd developed a great interest in Russian folk song. Sadly, her chance to study the folk music of Russia, Norway and Finland in St Petersburg (for which she received a grant from the University of Wales in 1915) was denied her by the First World War.
Morfydd continued to compose and perform, with concerts in Bath and Oxford, and made her professional debut at London’s Aeolian Hall in January 1917. Then, a month later, Morfydd unexpectedly married. Her husband was the Freudian psychoanalyst Ernest Jones (born in Gowerton) – an aethiest with a flamboyant lifestyle and thirteen years her senior. The wedding at Marylebone Register Office after only a six week courtship was so sudden that none of her family and friends attended.
Marriage curtailed Morfydd’s music; in 1917 she published just two songs. Ernest did not wish his wife to perform in public; expecting her to support his busy professional career at the expense of her own. So that year she only performed at the Eisteddfod and one concert. In addition there were religious tensions arising from her Christian faith and Ernest’s atheism. In September, six months after their civil marriage, the couple married again - at the Charing Cross chapel in the presence of her parents.
Morfydd Owen, 1915
By 1918 Morfydd’s twin brothers were serving in France and on 6 April her mother, Sarah, died suddenly. In August Ernest took Morfydd on holiday to Gower (a place she had not visited) where his father was living at Craig-y-môr, in Plunch Lane, Thistleboon. The couple visited Caswell and Langland and lunched at the Kardomah in Swansea. On 30 August the family (Ernest’s sister and her husband lived in Mumbles) gathered at Craig-y-môr and listened to Morfydd singing. The next day Morfydd was taken ill with pain and a high fever. She had acute appendicitis and needed an immediate operation. Instead of taking her to Swansea Infirmary, Ernest arranged for her to be operated on at the house by a local surgeon with himself acting as anaesthetist. Morfydd went into a coma and a few days later, on 7 September, she died - of delayed chloroform poisoning.
In his autobiography, Ernest Jones said that neither he nor the local doctor had known of a recent discovery that chloroform poisoning was a likelihood with a young patient, with a suppurating wound, and deprived of sugar (due to wartime rationing). Had the anaesthetic been ether the tragedy might not have happened.
There was no post-mortem. Morfydd was buried four days later in Oystermouth Cemetery - before a death certificate was issued. You can find her grave (a red sandstone column) by following the main cemetery path right to the top and turning left.
Morfydd Owen’s death at such a young age was a tragic loss to her family and friends. It also deprived the world of one the most supremely talented and gifted musicians Wales had yet produced. The centenary of her death was marked by several events including performances of her work at the Gower Festival and the BBC Proms, a lecture by Dr Rhian Davies at Swansea University and the unveiling of two plaques - one at her Treforest birthplace and the other at Craig-y-môr in Plunch Lane, Thistleboon.
Kate Jones, September 2018
Acknowledgements: I thank Gary Gregor of the Gower Society for helping me with this article. Other references: ‘An Incalculable Loss’: Morfydd Owen 1891-1918, Rhian Davies on www.illuminatewomencomposers.co.uk; Remembering Morfydd, Arts Council of Wales; Freud’s Wizard, Brenda Maddox; Ernest Jones, Freud’s Alter Ego, Vincent Brome; engraving of the Welsh Presbyterian Church in London, dated 1888; Morfydd Owen, 1915, private collection; Photographs of the blue plaque and of Morfydd’s grave in Oystermouth Cemetery, Kate Jones.
More: Articles by Kate Jones >
More: Thistleboon collection >
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse